Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Open thread — the illustrated edition

Not to make you feel less fortunate than I am or anything, but I won’t be blogging for a few hours today because I’m going to hear Daniel Hannan speak!! Even better, I’ll be going with Charles Martel. Yay!

While I’m gone, please consider this an Open Thread. I can suggest a few topics, and I’ve got lots of posters to spur you on regarding Israel’s latest fight for survival:

And second, a bunch from Israel. If you use social media, please think about sharing them. This is the first war in which Israel and pro-Israel NGOs are fighting back, not just on the field and in state houses, but in social media. We’re soldiers in this battle too and, if we support Israel, should help out:

Share this:

People better hope Hamas doesn’t export their digging skills to Mexico. Otherwise, people will realize that Middle East terror can’t be contained in the ME with diplomacy run by Democrat megalomaniacs that is making the US Regime into the #1 Evil on this planet.

JKB

I’ve been watching some Learn Liberty videos. I found this one on the Trail of Tears to be very compelling. A lesson from it is that a small group in power did go against Supreme Court rulings and the voices of many of the great thinkers of the day to do, what today is defined as ethnic cleansing against a weaker group. To me this shows the importance of keeping the ability to extra-judicial if required, i.e., keep and bear arms, and to be skeptical of following the rules in the face of a president who won’t.

A shorter video 4 min is this one on Why is the NRA so Powerful? It is more about government lobbying but I still laugh when he gets to the NRA’s secret weapon…so to speak.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

Read 1824 the Trail of Tears by Eric Flint. Maybe another title.

The lesson I took from that is that the Native Americans were too late. The United States recognizes no sovereignty except that of states. Indians with their own government but unable to petition or unwilling to petition for a state under federal law, then that means they are in direct competition with UStates, like Georgia.

It’s not about Jackson recognizing the legitimacy of the decision or not. It’s about the President enforcing the law itself. The US President decided to side with a US state, Georgia, over a foreign nation’s residents in that state. Any other decision would be sparked something akin to a civil war, as the federal government seeks to enforce its decrees over a sovereign state. And Southern states like Georgia has always held “sovereignty” in deep affect, even after the US Civil War I.

The Indian tribes, thus moved too late. If they had moved to California and took over Nevada or Mexico, the US would have accepted them as a state. By that time, it was too late, and the President chose to execute the policy of removal. Which was already building up.

The indian tribes had adopted several of the white man’s ways, but they were too slow and stubborn in adopting all of it before the end. And so it was one nation’s might vs another nation’s, and the Cherokees were not strong enough to contest even Georgia, which was going to physically expel them using their army, anyways.

JKB

Yes, a President(s) decided to go against the ruling of the US Supreme Court and earlier recognition of the Cherokee nation. Justify it all you want but Jackson and Van Buren acted lawlessly. Not unlike a more recent President.

It has happened and it can again. The lesson is to not trust that the rule of law will overcome bad actors in positions of power, if you don’t have the power to resist their use of force with force.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

“to be very compelling.”

It’s quite obvious you’ve been made into a propaganda puppet and are now acting out of emotion. You think you can fool these eyes? Try again.

You no longer have Access to Logic, JKB, and you don’t even realize it. Nothing anyone says about Jackson will penetrate your built in bias and emotion now, so have fun with it. It won’t last against any truly strong hits.

“The lesson is to not trust that the rule of law will overcome bad actors in positions of power”

The lesson here is not to believe in anybody’s propaganda, or if you do believe, stop acting like your emotion=logic. It’s not a logickal argument at all. Everything can be solved if you assume Jackson was acting as a bad actor. But it all falls apart for one reason.

Jackson wasn’t a bad actor and I knew about this historical issue YEARS before you were ever “suaded” by some monologue emotion based propaganda on youtube, JKB. Deal with that, why don’t ya.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

Let’s see here. Basic psychological profile is a Hussein hater that needs to find other bad actors to blame because he can’t do anything to Hussein, so has to find dead white male Presidents to kick in the teeth.

And if one gets “ethnic cleansing” and various other Hussein sounding “lawlessness”, then it’s all okay, it’s all righteous.

You can convince yourself that you’re expiating your guilt for the present by going into the past. What it won’t convince is people living on my side of the world. I’ll know it. And I’ll know that you know it, sooner or later, somewhere deep down there in conscience land.

At least half of that monologue professor’s youtube presentation is chock full of confirmation bias, propaganda weapons, and intellectual memes with slanted and weaponized phrasing. You can’t do anything against Obama? You can’t do anything cause you have no propaganda defenses, that’s why. And so finding some Bad Actor US President in the past, who you have no Fing clue what the hell was going on even 4 years ago, is a good strategy. Because they can’t defend themselves against you either. So you rationalize anybody’s unbiased judgment, that they formed before you were ever even aware of Hussein Obama, as “justifications”.

Is there a reason for me to go on with this intel profile or is that enough to justify things?

Ron19

“”Is there a reason for me to go on with this intel profile or is that enough to justify things?””

No need to go on.

I can just feel the love of humanity pouring from you.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

Have you figured out that Jesus Christ chased out the money changers yet, from the Bible? Or are you still reading your own religious text to see what the Revealed truth is, Ron.

Ron19

Since I’m not as smart as you, Ymar, and can’t figure out how to find something so simple, please tell where, in what translation, book, chapter, and verse, Jesus chased the money changers out of the city:

Since you can’t produce the reference that you presumably used to say that Jesus chased the moneychangers out of the city, Y, I guess that your no smarter or well informed than I am after all.

Caped Crusader, you seem to have bought into the direct equivalence of the words “city” and “temple.” Do you have a source for that assertion?

Ron19

From Townhall,com,

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday morning in Halbig v. Burwell that the government isn’t Humpty Dumpty and so statutory text doesn’t mean whatever the government says it means.

Tara S

I was wondering if any of you could help me crowdsource a statement I made the other day about Israel. Somebody I follow on social media made a post about how she thinks the discussion of this conflict seems very one-sided, and followed it up with some pro-Israel links and info. I added to her post with a few extra paragraphs, and one of the things I wrote went something like this:

“[Hamas has no regard for civilian life, while] Israel has been doing more to avoid civilian casualties in the enemy’s country than I have EVER heard of ANYbody in ANY war doing.”

This is factually true, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on wars throughout history and their participants’ tactics, so I was hoping to be able to back it up a little.

Israel has been using targeted strikes; has given broad warnings to inhabitants of Gaza telling them to get out of areas that may become warzones; has given more individual warnings via texts and telephone calls, including to members of various terrorists’ families; has used warning shots to tell residents to get away from areas that are about to be bombed; has offered to donate blood to wounded Gazans; has aborted strikes when civilians have offered themselves up as human shields to protect the targets; and that’s all I can think of off the top of my head, but if I’ve missed anything feel free to tell me.

With all of that in mind, does anybody know if this much respect for civilian lives in enemy countries is normal for civilized nations participating in a war? What are the usual precautions taken to try to minimize noncombatant loss of life?

Any answers would be much appreciated.

JKB

Tara,
Don’t view this as a conventional war. Israel is engaged in a counter-insurgency. In a counter-insurgency, taking efforts to limit non-combatant casualties is part of the “hearts and minds” campaign. Some might say such an effort is lost on the Palestinians but the alternative isn’t even an option. Israel cannot act as the French did in Vietnam, and definitely not as the French did in Algeria with widespread murder and torture by French paratroopers. Nor can they even be as aggressive as the British in Ireland, and then later in Northern Ireland.

Israel is also at the disadvantage of having left Gaza and therefore do not have the intelligence sources they had and continue to have in the West Bank.

Now, it should be noted that Israel is taking these efforts for strategic purposes. Given the organized effort against them in the world media they must take efforts to deny them ammunition and tactical advantage.

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com David Foster

Tara…here’s a case in point that may be relevant. As the D-Day invasion approached, the Allied high command determined to use air power to convert the relevant parts of France into a “railway desert,” thereby inhibiting the movement of German troops and equipment. Initial estimates of French casualties from this bombing campaign ran to 160,000, of whom a quarter were expected to be killed. Note that this was bombing not of enemy territory, but of an occupied ally.

Plans were modified somewhat to minimize French civilian casualties, but in the event they were still horrific. The attack on the La Chapelle marshalling yards in Paris alone killed 641 people and wounded 377.

puts French civilian casualties from US/British bombing during the whole war at about 67,000….it seems likely that more than half on these resulted from the anti-railroad campaign.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

No, it’s not normal.

That’s because the proximity of human shields to targets that can be hit with GPS devices and tracked via cellphone, was never combined. People did drop leaflets warning people, generally, but nobody bothered to warn an individual apartment that they were housing terrorists. It would normally be the entire town that had to be evacuated, as bombs and artillery wasn’t precise enough to distinguish between them.

The Israeli forces started doing a lot of these warnings, even in 2000. They use military forces to kill terrorists in operations, but it doesn’t really break the morale of the Palestinians because it doesn’t break the families or the homes of such.

These tactics are meaningless, if the strategy is ineffective. They can push back the rocket line, but that’s not going win the war. They were trying to unoccupy Gaza and the West Bank, so they can win the war. Have they won the war yet? Not even close.

Quite honestly there is nothing you can post, write or photoshop that will counter the left. You are playing their game! They want to be seen as moral arbiters,have moral judgements, be something important and they find targets that are either defenseless or are from groups they thought were completely obedient and need a good screaming at.

The only thing to do is counter attack. Make sure that they realize your are judging them as well. Make sure they know you blame them for the failures of Obamacare, that they have no moral standing given how they stood by for atrocities by Mao, Stalin, Pol Castro and more. It can be big, small whatever but hold them to account. They won’t like it.

Make sure that you support the right of indigenous people to be rid of European made ideas like Communism.

If they say all religion is stupid and the Bible can’t be used to say who has the land but they do because they have higher thoughts make sure you pin them down and have them denounce dumb civil war ideas like dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels. You’ll notice they won’t denounce. They may say they are free thinkers but they won’t denounce. Make sure you call them on it.

Make sure that when they use the word FASCIST that you make it clear Leftists were the fascists!!!. If you don’t know the history read Road to Serfdom. Learn what Nazism was. These people are the Fascists!! They are the intellectual progeny although they deny it!!!

Do not be polite. Israel has had treaties with the Egyptians, Oslo and has done humanitarian work all over the world. They are treated the way leftists treat anyone in their way.

Your job is not to win the argument. Your job is to win the propaganda war!!! Make this as unpleasant for them as you can. Learn to like it. The more you like it the less they will feel like a powerful bully and more like the victim they feel like in their daily lives. You are actually giving them tough love. You are giving them resistance because you truly want a better world but the Left is just using them

Caped Crusader

Since all of us are not deceived by the controlled corrupt news apparatus, and know that Obama gave a secret order to his paramilitary thugs, recruited since his famous speech, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fO-usAlqak) to shoot down the Malaysian plane to stop the coverage of all the scandals, it would be interesting if each of us recounted the number and details of any emergency landings we have personally experienced.

In the 1970’s we were on our way to Washington to show the children the nations seat of government. About 30 minutes out our 727 experienced a loud boom and shuddered violently. The captain immediately pulled back on the throttle and began circling. I thought we might have been struck by a small plane. After a few seconds he announced that all appeared well and the trip would be continued, immediately followed by a second more violent boom and shudder. He immediately announced, ” tighten your seat belts, it appeared we had ingested a bird, and to prepare for and emergency landing and we would be returning to the airport”. Our son about age 10 and an avid reader of Jane’s Fighting Ships and other such volumes, tugged my sleeve and said, “Dad, does he know there are no birds at 30,000 feet? I told him I thought he did, but not to say that too loud, for it might frighten others. A few moments later an Indian man across the aisle tugged at my sleeve and said in the characteristic high pitched Indian accent, “Please sir, would you pray to Jesus for me (when the cheese gets binding)? A man behind us who talked like a pilot said he thought we had experienced a compressor stall, which is a nice way of saying one engine had blown all to hell. We limped back and made an uneventful landing but seeing all those emergency vehicles with their flashing lights lined up adjacent to the runway and knowing they are there for you made for an unforgettable moment. I have been in four emergency situations.

Jose

I had a similar experience the day after I completed basic training, flying to technical training school.

To digress a bit, during basic some things were implanted deeply in our behavior, like never participating in a Public Display of Affection. There was never to be any physical contact with our superiors, especially officers. Absolutely no touchy feely stuff was allowed under any circumstances while on duty.

Anyway, there were a number of military people flying out of San Antonio that day, back when we always traveled in uniform. As the plane climbed following takeoff, there was a loud noise and violent shaking. It stopped, and resumed again. The pilot announced that we would make an emergency landing, and that the plane would be able to fly safely until back on the ground.

I looked across the aisle at a fellow airman with wide eyes who was sitting stiffly in his seat, clutching the armrests. I wondered if he were more worried about the plane, or the lady Lt Col who had both arms wrapped around his neck. If not for the arm rest, she would have been in his lap.

I was amazed at the breach in military protocol, but fortunately, there were no Training Instructors on the plane. We landed safely, and went our separate ways

qr4j

Just back from Europe. Europe has clean restrooms. But you have to pay to use them unless you are in a patron in a restaurant or bar. Public restrooms cost half a buck to a buck (Euro, not USD).

I would be willing to pay a $1 to use the john in the US if the john were clean. Obama would make me pay $5 to use it in order to subsidize the nonworking class. And the restroom would be tended by a union member. And it would NOT be clean. United Restroom Attendants Union members would strike. They’d claim the restrooms smell like poop and that their civil rights were violated by stinky restrooms.

I enjoyed the pay toilets while they lasted. Peace in the midst of the storm, baby!

Caped Crusader

It would only cost a dollar, BUT EPA service fee would be another five dollars; and still would not be clean.

lee

The union would be the Union of Restroom Independent National Employees.

SADIE

Israeli soldiers on a break from combat in Gaza singing, The One Who Believes.